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From Meteorites

Let me say this one thing, that the meteor is a woman of varying biologies and the crocuses are rising up. In only three words I can convey a schism: x, y, z. Insert here for pleasure. The increasing question of if anything is scientific: we have sensations unreliably programmed. The wall’s texture is uncomfortable. That is, the fan moves air into and out of a white room, where otherwise it stultifies.

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It’s hot in here. Thrown rock at a head and rising water. Or sewage. A euphemism for shit in your lake. I wondered if it was true all the pipes in the bathroom went to the same place, as the cartoon about anal sex suggested. I’d always thought they held us differently. Still, an ice shelf will break off tomorrow. The day after tomorrow will cut your leg on a rusty car door. A sensibility for perseverance I clearly lack.

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W stands for whitewater, as in how what was once clear is named. The invention of butter for many purposes, not all of them demure. If I tell you I read the tarot, and in it I saw a rock hurtling through space, propelled by an initial force. The brontosaurus, like today’s elephant, mourns. Even for other species’ dead, better than us. An altered evolution. Like a cuffed rose. I laid down in the bed and didn’t rise for several hours. I wore an emerald dress. It had a low back. The shape of a feathered wing as a knife coming together in the library. Then, inexplicably, a slow film and a blue one.

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I hold the dysphoria in a clean line. Rich green triangle. In high school I made drawings of silhouettes, big paintings of blue rings locked in chains. This is not divorceable from my body behind them, and I am working to make it clear: every line has been drawn, every work the result of a moving hand. KB: “A complex notion of causality does not estrange us from responsibility.” I would have said absolve but it was too perfect to change. Still, I am attached to the category of human. I see it in the clay they perform into a sculpture. I read research on the pineal gland, how hormones are probably to blame. I mean for everything. I am an identical twin and yet what is similar about us. The brushfire we put out every day for two years until the effort takes us with it. Punctuation, punctuation, punctuation, punctuation, estrangement.

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In lieu of screaming a sound internal. Wroar. Whirring. Then, not. Then, not. Ritual of release or mourning. A carefully drawn line can not only demarcate, but create. A crowd on one side of the page and through the hoops on the other, less. Interlocked like lace. I couldn’t have imagined I would begin drawing again, but I did. Randomness allowed, as a belief that it has been building. Or perhaps abstraction, that it is so personal. “If you feel you are, you are.” And so I move through the world having disowned what I worked so hard to attain, this man, although I never could convince anyone I was cruel. A masculinity participated in. A hot tub just sitting there, people in, people out.

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There is a form that recurrence takes, but it does not tell you what it can hold. The fog is contagious. A car moves through it slowly, as it condenses to rain and back again. A new book important to me with a title I hate. I can’t tell if writing things out makes them more likely to happen or only increases my anxiety. That is, the self as constituted in the thin statue in the entranceway, of bronzed copper. The sled as red metal.

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… I fear I’ve pushed too far. I tumbled over my own muscle, it seized up, strained as the words associate. Is it too intentional? Sure, the dragonfly wing does reflect the puddle back. I feel it is important. I distrust my own impressions, how I value the silk flash over the metal. The lower abs, the forehead: here gather the propulsive forces. A dandelion whitening and dispersing. Let it be softer than I imagine.

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Can I tell you when I’m frustrated I sometimes hurt myself? Just lightly, a repeated pressure on my calf. A turning blue. This is an improvement. This is the energy born forward from an anxiety, a small bee that has entered, lost. A bee without belief. My air conditioner keeps me trapped. There is a thin line the door fills, it separates one wall from the other and I can feel the shifting sequoia when I pass through. I move away from food, as if from fire. I move away from the ugly bridge being built and rebuilt in my lungs.

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On a scream a naked form flew. Feral feeling but no just cause. A search party wove its way into the loom. We clothed her, the voice. It was not clear what fabric would do, other than warm. Once I become aware of an alternative it is difficult to continue on. Do not say it, it’s coming I know it but I’m hoping you won’t: the fan fell from the window again. That’s how she got out. I’m a speculative mind. You were below sea level.

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During the séance, I kept quiet. The ashes alongside the lilies on the water. Each shifting scrim. A force behind movement that lied about its whereabouts: it wasn’t me. I try to remind you about the mask in my bedroom, venetian carnival hung on the wall, how it fell and shattered. It was loud and heavy. Again, again, the lava rock in space. I jumped down to break the spell. I was grateful for the tall fence I’d built around me. The small rabbit hopped right through.

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I take the deer as an omen, ghosts stopped silently in the city’s road. Unconcerned. They amble off, but they have rattled me. I, the death wail of each passing car; I, a late night but still somehow bright sky. When I looked through the window from outside I brought down a spider web. When I opened the door, I had my phone to my ear, but off, to show whatever was coming from the other side that I would be missed.

S. Brook Corfman is a Pittsburgh poet who writes plays. His work has appeared in periodicals including Quarterly West,Washington Square, Gigantic Sequins, and Ghost Proposal. Follow him at @sbcorfman.